Forget About the Sunshine
by Briannon
Summary: Lucifer has risen. The apocalypse is on. The Winchesters do what they do best. Post-Lucifer Rising AU.
1. Prologue

**Forget About the Sunshine**

**Prologue:**

"He's coming," Sam gasped.

As the light poured out of the circle of blood on the floor, the earth under their feet shook. Dean pulled on Sam's arm to lead him away, but his brother was frozen in place, his face filled with horror.

"Sam," Dean said, a warning, but the air around them was screaming. Dean couldn't hear himself over the roar; there was no way Sam could hear him.

The white light stretched out, filled the little church until everything around them was blotted out. Dean looked around, tried to find something – anything – in that unholy blaze, but he couldn't see a thing.

Not even Sam.

When Dean came to, everything had changed. They were in a field in the middle of nowhere. Blond strands of grass surrounded them, lending a slight but vulnerable shelter. The sky was light blue, and it reminded Dean of how the sky looked that first day out of Hell. Sam sat next to him in the dirt, a shadow facing away. Old blood stained his jeans, dry and brown and stiff. He turned a little as Dean stirred, just his head, cocking one ear towards Dean, but he didn't move any further than that.

Dean exhaled and leaned into the cool earth under him. Something new was up with his brother, and Dean wanted to shake him already. Ever since Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell, Sam had kept his own special brand of secrets, and getting him to share any of it was like sawing off his own foot. Slow, painful, and in the end the person who was walking around with a limp was Dean.

He sat up and wiped at the dried blood crusted under his nose. He didn't remember the nosebleed, but he had obviously been out for a while. The passage of time had been just a flicker – felt like he'd blinked and was _there_ more than anything.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

Sam didn't answer, he just shrugged. The silence was a new thing. Dean expected Sam to be all over him once he was awake, trying to explain or apologize again or something, so it was strange that he hadn't said anything yet. Even when he was lying to Dean, at least he was still talking.

Dean touched his shoulder, a soft tap, tentative. There was a chance that Sam hadn't gotten his voicemail, that he'd deleted it without listening, that he was afraid of what Dean might do to him. "Hey, man. Talk to me."

"It's official," Sam said. His voice was rough and raw, like he'd been crying or screaming or both. "I did it. I summoned Lucifer. I'm the –"

Dean cut him off with a cuff to the back of his head. Sam ducked, flinched – whatever – and pulled himself up tight until he seemed to shrink. "Look at me, Sam. Yeah, you fucked up. Yeah, things are looking kinda bad..."

"That's an understatement," Sam muttered, and he sounded so much younger, more like the Sam Dean had known before his time in the Pit. Sam spread his arms open, framing the horizon, shook his head, and then finally turned his head toward Dean. He kept his eyes shut, and his face was pained. "This is what Dad wanted you to stop, Dean. You should have killed me before it happened, before it got this far. Look, it's what he would have wanted."

"It's not what _I_ wanted," Dean countered. The force of his own voice surprised him. "Dad was full of it, he should have never said that kind of shit to me in the first place."

Sam dropped his head, and his hair fell across his face. He still hadn't opened his eyes, and the fact that he hadn't made a cold knot form in Dean's belly.

"Look at me," Dean said.

Sam turned his face away. "You sure? It's not pretty."

"How bad can it be, Sammy? Jesus Christ –"

Sam flinched.

Dean had to remind himself to breathe, had to think about his baby brother and everything the two of them had been through together. Fuck, he had to remind himself that Sam _was_ his brother. "Look at me," he said again.

When Sam turned, it was with his entire body. A surrender, defeat written across the line of his shoulders. "I'm sorry," Sam said, his voice hardly above a whisper. "I'm so, so sorry." And then he looked at Dean for the first time since Lucifer had come back to earth.

Sam's eyes were black.


	2. Chapter 1

Kripke and I seems to have borrowed a few ideas from each other. Don't worry, though. Unlike him, I'm not dropping the demon blood addiction.

* * *

**Part One:**

The situation sucked balls.

Yeah, apocalypse and everything, but there were more pressing matters than the ultimate fate of the human race and the fact that a literal holy war was in the making. The Winchesters were in the middle of that, like they always were in the middle of everything, and that was bad. Lucifer was free to walk the earth, and that didn't mean good things for kittens and puppies, either. Hell was about to be unleashed across the globe, and Dean had a little more than a personal stake in what happened.

But worse, Dean didn't know where in the continental U.S. they were, or how they had gotten there. The field looked kind of mid-western, with a few trees here and there, but there were also hills, the gentle rolling kind that looked like mountains to people who had never seen a mountain before. It took them the better part of an hour to hike through the field to find a road at all, and what they found was little more than two ruts and shorter grass – nothing Dean would drive the Impala over.

"Idaho," Sam guessed, and yeah, it sort of looked like Idaho.

"Think those angelic douches got us out of there?"

"Dunno," was the reply. Sam's eyes were back to normal, but they looked darker to Dean, like the beetle-black was just waiting underneath that warm hazel. "There was just all of that light, man, we were surrounded by it. And then –"

"What, we were in the field and your eyes were black?"

Okay, Dean couldn't help himself, but then Sam dropped his head and stared at his feet, and that made Dean feel like a piece of shit. "I'm sorry," Sam said, and he sounded so worn out, so defeated.

Trying to make him feel better? That was what Dean would have done Before, so he wet his lips and started. "Look, you did something good. You killed Lilith. That's one less demon bitch we have to worry about."

Sam shook his head. "You can stop it, Dean. It's not going to make me feel better. I was too late, and you still went to Hell."

The thing he had never told Sam, with all of his confessions about the trip Downstairs, was that sometimes he could still see it. Hell. It was worse of a place than the imagination could contain, and he had survived forty years there, and was somehow still human. One of those times Sam had been gone, fucking around with Ruby and drinking her blood or whatever – he was still pissed about that – Dean had taken out Sam's laptop, dusty from lack of use, and looked it up. Post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, Stockholm Syndrome. Names for what he had gone through, was still going through, names to make him feel better about what he had done there. It didn't help.

Dean didn't fear Hell, not the way most people did. He was afraid of what it made him do. Of what he had chosen to do. And he regretted every fucking moment of those ten years.

"It doesn't matter," he told Sam.

Sam's head snapped up, eyes flashing and disturbingly dark. "Doesn't matter?" he repeated. "Of course it matters! Dean, you spent forty years in Hell because of me!"

Dean reached for his brother, touched his shoulder and held onto his shirt so Sam couldn't pull away. Dean wanted to yell at him, to let out some of the emotion that boiled under the surface all the time, to scream about how it was worth it, dammit, because Sam was alive. He could laugh and cry and do stupid shit to piss off his awesome brother. He could fight, he could laugh in the face of destiny, and live.

"Sammy," he said instead, and that one word said everything for him.

Sam was silent for a while, and when he spoke up again, his voice was that same low, defeated tone he had used before. "It's because of what I did," he explained. "Dean, it was the demon blood and using my powers that turned my eyes black." He took a deep breath, and Dean stopped walking and turned to face him. "I did this, Dean. I decided that I knew better than you or the angels or Chuck or anyone else."

Dean waited.

Sam searched his face, looking for what, Dean didn't know. Whether Sam found it or not, he slumped his shoulders and dropped his head. "What do I do now?"

"What do you do now?" Dean repeated, and something about his tone made Sam lift his head again, those shaggy ends of his hair falling across his eyes. "I'll tell you what. You live with it. Just like me."

Sam shook his head, his eyes fierce, but still human. "No, what happened to you was different –"

Dean met Sam's eyes, and he trailed off mid-sentence and looked away. "I was given a choice. I chose to torture souls, and I knew it was wrong. But I did it anyway. And dammit, Sammy, I enjoyed it." Dean had to swallow it down, the guilt, had to force all of that emotion back under the surface so he could breathe. "You've got to live with it, every minute of every day."

"Dean," Sam said, and his voice broke. Dean wanted to tell him, _no chick-flick moments_, wanted to give him a hug and make everything all better, like he used to when they were kids. But there were some things that Dean couldn't erase. "Dean," Sam said again, but his tone had changed. "I'm _thirsty_."

He knew what Sam meant. He'd seen the way Sam had lapped up that blood, watched him drink it like it was the best tasting shit on the planet. But Dean rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh and pretended he didn't know. They were going to have to talk about it sometime, but that time would come later. "Keep walking," he said. "As soon as we come to a Quik-E-Mart, I'll buy you some Yoo-hoo or something. Okay?"

Sam nodded, and Dean started walking, Sam following by half a step. They'd only been moving for a few moments when Dean heard his brother mutter behind him, "I want a pop-tart, too," like he was five years old.

Dean smiled. That stupid whine of his sounded good, sounded like Sam, and maybe Dean even sounded like himself, too. There was still Lucifer and the angels and the demon blood to deal with, but the Winchesters were hitting their stride again. They were back together, even if Dean felt everything was going to go to shit before it got better.

It was a start.

***

It was dark out when they made it to a road that was paved. There were no cars between that field in the middle of nowhere and whatever road they were walking in probably-Idaho. If the angels had gotten them out of that little church, they could have at least tossed them out by Bobby's.

"You think they got us out?" Dean asked, more to get Sam talking again than anything else.

Sam kept his eyes on the road and his feet and didn't answer, which made Dean think about what had happened. No angels would have been there. Castiel was with Chuck. Zachariah _wanted_ the apocalypse to happen. And Anna... Well Dean didn't want to think about her too hard. He still wasn't certain that screwing a Heavenly Host wouldn't send him straight back to Hell.

All of that left few options for the agent of their escape.

"Did _you_?" he asked at last. He half hoped that Sam wouldn't answer, because the question scared him.

"I don't know," Sam said, and that didn't make Dean feel any better. "I couldn't move. Dean, I could feel him coming, and I couldn't do anything. I didn't know if you'd survive –"

"What," Dean interrupted. "Lucifer?"

Sam lifted his head, just enough that Dean could see his eyes again. They were still normal, still warm and hazel. "Just because he's fallen doesn't mean he's not an angel," Sam pointed out. "He could have burned your eyes out of your head."

"And you?"

Sam didn't say anything. Dean wasn't sure what that meant, either. Whether Sam was sure he would have survived, or whether Sam didn't care if he survived, Dean didn't know. There was too much going on at once, too many sides and factions, and Dean was sick of his family being in the middle of it.

Like they even had a choice in the matter.

So they kept walking. After another hour walking the blacktop, they found some cars. There were three in a row, crowding the road, and two of them were running and empty. The one in front, a battered green Ford truck, had fishtailed across the road. The engine was dead, the gas tank dry.

"Okay," Dean said. "Weird." He turned to Sam, and whatever he was about to say froze on his tongue.

It was dark enough that Dean could barely make out the color of Sam's eyes. In the faint moonlight, his eyes looked black, but surrounding the blackness was a ring of white. The light, not the demon blood, then. Tension radiated off of Sam like heat, his limbs strangely stiff as he came up on the truck.

"What is it?" Dean asked.

Sam just shook his head, eyes fixed on that battered Ford. He stopped, several feet away, looking something like a spooked cat, and refused to move any closer.

Dean fumbled around for Ruby's knife. Something about the way Sam held himself filled him with a vague worry. He crept up to the passenger side, careful, stealthy, even though he couldn't see anyone through the windows of the truck. It was when he yanked the passenger door open that two things hit him at once. One, the unmistakable smell of sulfur. Two, the just-as-unmistakable smell of blood.

Demon blood. Sam stumbled away, one arm thrown over his face. Dean didn't bother slamming the door shut again. The damage was already done. "I want it, Dean," Sam babbled. "Don't let me near it, please. I'm so fucking thirsty."

"Walk it off, Sammy," Dean told him, jerked the hand with the knife out toward the empty darkness. "I'll take care of this."

Sam nodded, just once, and turned away.

Dean turned back to the truck and looked it over. Yeah, blood everywhere, and of the kind that was like heroin to his baby brother. That didn't explain what the hell had happened. The other two cars – a silver Impala, late '90s model, and another Ford, a red Escort – were clean of both blood and sulfur. So something violent happened in the truck, and the other two cars stopped to see what happened. And vanished, with the cars still running.

He walked over to where Sam was standing, looking out into the night with that brooding set to his shoulders. "I got nothing," he said. "Near as I can tell, the only demonic influence was in the truck."

"Great," Sam muttered.

"Look on the bright side, Sammy," Dean said, with artificial cheer in his voice. He even cuffed Sam's shoulder, like old times. "Montana," he pronounced.

Sam turned to him, his brow all wrinkled up. "Montana?" he repeated, then glanced back to the cars. "The plates?"

"Yeah. And I figured, since no one's using these cars, we can just take one. I vote for the Impala. Not as pretty as mine, but she'll do."

"Dean." The shift in Sam's tone hit him like a hammer.

Dean turned, eyes searching the dark for a threat, instinct placing him between his brother and danger. "Where?" he demanded, but Sam didn't need to answer. As soon as he was pointed in the right direction, he saw it too. Little lights, like will o' the wisp, drifting through the dark. The lights followed a line, some sort of path in the dark that they couldn't see, but they were definitely moving closer.

They didn't even say anything, just both bolted for the Impala. Dean didn't know what had happened, what was happening, but he could recognize when it was time to make a strategic withdrawal.

"They were demons," Sam confessed, after they'd been driving for almost an hour.

It hit him, two blows at once. What were a bunch of demons doing out in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere? And how the Hell did Sam know they were demons? He looked over at Sam, but Sam wasn't looking back. He had his head turned away, almost like he was looking at the side mirror. Watching the road behind them? Or looking at himself?

"I hope there's more to it than that," Dean said. That got Sam to lift his head and look at him, but Dean kept his eyes on the road. "I want you to level with me, Sam, because when you don't, you start keeping secrets until things are going critical. You didn't tell me about leaving for Stanford, about the nightmares, or exorcising demons with your brain, or drinking demon blood, right up until you couldn't hide it anymore."

"Dean..." Sam hesitated, and then the words spilled out. "I could feel them, like – I don't know. I knew they were there. And I knew they were coming for us."

Another blow, but Dean had kind of expected that one. "I don't like the sound of it," he said.

"Yeah," Sam said quietly. "Neither do I."

***

Dean headed to South Dakota and Bobby because, hey, they were in Montana. Bobby was practically next door. They ditched the silver Impala, right as the tank was about to run dry, and headed to a diner for some food. Sam ate very little and drank even less. When he caught Dean looking at him again, he just shook his head.

It was then that it hit him all at once. That was his Sam, looking sick and miserable, and he'd had his own part to play in it. They were both responsible for what had happened, and the thought made his own food taste like shit.

They picked up a new car from the diner's parking lot. The place had crappy pie, so Dean felt justified.

He didn't let Sam drive. Not that Sam asked. He slept, face still pressed up against the window, but restlessly. They'd taken sleeping in moving vehicles to a high art, but the Celica he'd stolen wasn't his Impala. It was a decent car, even if it was foreign, but it wasn't familiar.

They hit the salvage yard just as the morning light was creeping over the horizon. Dean wasn't sure how Bobby was going to react to Sam, but he hoped that he could keep things under control for at least a little while. Long enough to explain what had happened, what was happening. And then... Well, they were going to have to figure out what to do about Sam, but it was clear that just locking him in the panic room wasn't good enough.

Although now that Sam's eyes were black, Dean wasn't so sure he'd be able to leave a Devil's Trap. Which might make things easier. Or harder.

They stayed out in the salvage yard, idling in the Celica. Waiting – well, Dean wasn't sure what he was waiting for. Maybe God to suddenly appear and pass on judgment to the two of them.

"Are we going in?" Sam asked, after they'd been sitting there for a while.

Dean cut off the engine. "Yeah," he said, and turned in his seat to look at his little brother. "I want to know how you want to handle this, okay? No more of this turning against each other bullshit. I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of worrying about you. We go in together or not at all."

Little parallel lines appeared between Sam's eyebrows, but the rest of his face stayed the same. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Dean took a deep breath. He hadn't been good talking about shit Before, he sure as hell wasn't good at it After. "The demon blood," he said. "You're pale, shaky. You need a fix, dude. Are you going to get one?"

"No!" In an instant, Sam's face turned dark. "No, Dean. I hated it! I hated how it made me feel, how I needed it, how I need it now. No."

And Dean smiled at him, reassuring _older brother knows best_ smile. "That's my boy. This is another monster, this demon part of you, and we're going to take care of it. Do you trust me?"

"You're going to put me in the panic room again." There was no anger in his tone, just something else, something like defeat. Sammy wasn't going to put up a fight, and for that, Dean was grateful. "I suppose I deserve it, after everything I did."

There were a million things Dean could have said, but he didn't know which things would make his brother feel better and which ones would drive him away. So he said nothing, just reached out to grab Sam's shoulder again.

"Dean?" Sam said, and he sounded so goddamned broken. "I don't know if I can do this alone."

"You won't have to, Sammy. I'll be here. I promise."

"Until death do us part?"

"What, again? We've both died, and I'm still here. I guess you're just stuck with me."

And finally – finally! – Sam smiled. "Does that mean we're going in? Face the music with Bobby?"

Dean didn't answer. He didn't have to. Sometime while they were talking, Bobby had appeared. He leaned on the hardtop to peer through the passenger window until Sam opened his door. There was a note of reluctance there, when Sam did. Dean understood. Bobby had tried to kill him too, once, and they didn't know how much he knew about the whole Lucifer situation.

Bobby ducked and leaned in, pushing the brim of his trucker hat back as he focused on Dean. "You got a phone call," he said, which was a surprise. "It's from Chuck."

***

"So," Chuck said, and his voice was shaking. "He did it. Sam broke the final seal."

"Yeah," Dean replied. "I could have stopped him, I think, if it weren't for that angelic bastard. How'd things go on your end? Cas okay?"

Chuck didn't say anything, which said a lot.

"Son of a bitch," Dean swore. "Fucking archangel –"

"I'm a little nervous about blasphemy right now," Chuck said, "which I think is understandable. Castiel exploded. Something about fallen angels being dangerous, I think."

"So, do you know how we got out of Ilchester?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I just write the stuff. I didn't see anything that you didn't."

Dean sighed. "No offense, Chuck, but you suck as a prophet."

"I can tell you this much. Lucifer needs a vessel, and he either hasn't found one yet, or he isn't wreaking havoc in it just yet."

"How do you know?"

"I got some really cheap tequila. The stuff's like manna."

Dean wrinkled up his nose. He'd tasted the really cheap stuff before, and the only thing it was good for was making Sam throw up like he was in his first trimester or something. "Okay, call if you learn anything else."

Dean hung up the phone, then, and turned to face Sam and Bobby, his mind turning. Chuck knew, and Dean was pretty certain that meant that Bobby knew as well. And yet, there hadn't been a salt line to cross, no holy water test, nothing. Which also made him wonder if Chuck knew something else, something that he hadn't told Dean.

"Bobby," Sam said, and his voice was soft. "Why haven't you tried to kill me yet?"

Not exactly how Dean was going to put it, but he appreciated that it was Sam asking. "I resent the 'yet'," Bobby replied. He lifted a bottle of beer, flicked the condensation in Sam's direction. Sam flinched away when the drops landed on him, but there was no smoke. "I ain't gonna kill you, unless you do something to make me."

"Starting the apocalypse isn't enough?"

Bobby shrugged. "You're an idjit, but last I knew, that ain't a killing offense." He pushed back his hat, scratched at his hairline as if to show that he wasn't concerned. "Chuck told me some of it, I figured the rest myself. There's only two reasons you boys would come to see me now." He jerked his head towards Sam, but his eyes were fixed on Dean. Wary, despite what he'd said. "He's gone darkside, and you're possessed, in which case you've come to kill me."

"Bobby," Sam said again.

"Or," Bobby interrupted, focusing back on Sam, "you realized you were dealing with a demon, got some sense in your fool head, and stopped fighting each other. I'm thinking the second one, myself. Am I right?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and the word came out as a rasp. "Sam's agreed to go cold turkey, and I've agreed to stay with him."

Well, agreed was a bit strong of a word to use since they'd barely discussed it, and judging by his reaction, Sam thought so, too. His head snapped up, eyes wide, concerned. "Dean, you can't. Last time – my powers –"

"Last time was different," Dean told him. "Last time was an intervention, and last time your eyes weren't black."

Sam flinched away, like Dean had used _Cristo_ on him.

Dean walked straight up to him and seized Sam's face in his hands. His eyes were still hazel, no trace of the beetle-black under the warm color. "I made a lot of mistakes, Sammy. I wasn't there when you needed me, but that's changed. I'm here now. I promised you, right? And I'm going to take care of you."

Sam didn't say anything, but his eyes were large and wet and trusting. Dean just hoped the decision he was making was the right one.

***

They experimented, first. Not that Bobby made them do it or anything, it just seemed like a good idea to see what they were up against. There wasn't that much in the way of lore about the Antichrist, not after he managed to start the apocalypse, at least. The knowledge was two-edged.

As for the testing itself, that was Sam's idea. Dean guessed that he wanted to see if a Devil's Trap would even hold him. It did, made his eyes flash black and Bobby swear. Holy water raised welts, steamed a little, but salt just made Sam look uncomfortable.

All of it meant that going in the panic room meant there was no coming back out. Not until – for better or worse – it was all over. And no matter which end came about, Dean was going to sit through it all, his own Last Days.

"Look," Sam said, pausing right outside the door. "I just want to say, if this doesn't go well –"

"Don't talk like that," Dean ordered. He'd lost so much, grieved for so many people, himself included, that he knew he couldn't bear it again.

The muscles in Sam's jaw jumped, but his face remained calm. "Okay then. Dean, I have one thing to say to you. Don't think I haven't noticed how you watch me. Watch my eyes." Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam cut him off. "You do. And it's okay. But when I go in there, they're going to turn black, and they're not going to change back. Are you going to be able to watch that?"

"No," Dean said, and the truth burned him just as much as a lie would have.

Sam rocked back, but he didn't get mad. He just nodded, like he expected that. "All right, then you don't have to."

Absolution. It was the last thing in the world that Dean wanted. "I made a promise. I'm not letting you go in there by yourself again."

Sam shook his head. "No, Dean. I mean you won't have to watch. _I_ promise." And then he closed his eyes, pressed them shut like they had been when Dean woke up in that field in the middle of Montana.

"You don't have to –"

"But I want to." Sam reach out blindly, grazed Dean's cheek with his fingers and then pawed his way down to his shoulder and let his hand rest there, heavy.

"Okay," Dean surrendered. It felt strange, like something he'd lost a long time ago. He took his brother by the hand, turned to lead him, and they crossed the threshold together.


	3. Chapter 2

I forgot that I hadn't posted this. Oops.

* * *

**Part Two:**

It was boring, for the most part. That was what struck Dean the hardest. Being locked up in a small room with little insulation, no privacy, and his voluntarily blinded brother was freaking boring. They couldn't even play cards. So what they did for the first day was read.

Well, Dean read. Sam huddled on his cot and shivered and listened to Dean read. Bobby supplied them with a number of thick, ancient books on the subject of the apocalypse, but without Sam's geekboy sidekick abilities to help, both of them got frustrated really fast.

"I don't think this is working," Sam said at last.

Dean rubbed at his eyes. He'd developed a severe headache from all of that reading. Latin wasn't his strong suit, granted, but it wasn't Sam's either, so he resented the superior tone his brother had taken. "Dude, any time you want to get off your ass and help me, go right ahead."

Sam shook his head. "You could just talk to me," he said, after a moment. "This last year, we didn't really do much talking, you know. After you got back."

"I talked enough for the both of us," Dean snapped. He was tired and his eyes hurt and he didn't want to have to deal with everything that had happened right then. "I told you about what I did, and you gave me the Readers Digest version of what happened to you."

Sam flinched, and that pissed Dean off, too.

"Look, I know you're fucking sorry, Sam, I get that. But we don't have to talk about it right now."

"What else are we going to do?" Sam asked.

And Dean didn't have an answer for that. It was frustrating was what it all was. Too many threads of conflict going on at once – the demon stuff with Sam, Lucifer and the angels, Cas being dead – it was just too much.

"I need a drink," Dean muttered to himself.

"Okay," Sam continued, "look. We don't know how long this is all going to take. If it takes at all. Dean, I don't think we should be bottling this sort of stuff up away from each other." He paused, took a deep breath, and then said, "No, Dean. I don't think that's the answer." There was frustration in his voice, too.

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked.

"Lucifer," Sam answered, like it was obvious, and Dean was just being thick.

"Okay, dude? You lost me –" Dean began, but Sam cut him off.

"Dean? Aren't you going to say anything? I'm kind of blind, here, so if you're giving me one of those looks of yours, it's not working. Just to let you know."

"I'm –" Dean started, but then stopped when the realization made him go cold. Sam wasn't talking to him. He wasn't talking to anyone. Well, anyone real. Dean closed the book he'd been reading, pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, and sighed. It had started.

***

Sam's bouts of crazy didn't stay the same. For one, he kind of swung between crazy and sane, usually with no warning at all. The crazy usually involved some yelling and throwing anything he could lay his hands on, but sometimes also took the form of long silences and aimless wandering. And when Sam _was_ sane, he was sick, which was messy and disgusting. As time went on, he also got more agitated, which was a fun bonus.

It was during one of his more sane moments that Sam asked to be tied down. Dean didn't like it, but what else could he do? Besides, Sam made a really good argument about it keeping him contained. Dean had a flashback, a wild vision of Sam's demon-fed powers slamming him across the room. Despite the Devil's Trap holding him in, Dean wasn't so sure that it wouldn't start up again.

Bobby came in sometime later. Dean didn't have a good sense of the passage of time in the panic room. The light that filtered down from above looked about the same no matter what. Truth be told, ever since he had kind of lost forty years, he'd had a little trouble with knowing how much time had passed, anyway. Sam was asleep, at any rate, so it had to have been several hours at least.

"How's he doing?"

Dean didn't answer. He just shook his head.

"You handcuffed him to the cot?"

"He asked me to."

Bobby shook his head, then. "I brought you some supplies. I know you don't want to leave him, but I'm going to be gone for a few days. I can't be bringing you food and changing your nappies when I'm not here, so you'll have to manage by yourself for a bit."

"Gone?" Dean repeated.

"Yeah, Ellen gave me a call." It had been a long while since Dean had heard that name, and it took him an embarrassingly long moment to figure out who Bobby was talking about. "I figure you two should lay low anyway. I ain't so sure the other hunters won't try to off Sam for what he did."

"Do they know?" Dean asked.

Bobby just shook his head, but it wasn't as reassuring as it could have been. The demons all knew, and that meant that as soon as the Winchesters were back on the scene, the demons were going to start talking. A lot. To anyone with a functional pair of ears. Gordon Walker and his buddies weren't the only ones who could put two and two together.

"I'll see you soon," Bobby said, and tossed a look in Sam's direction. Dean followed his gaze to his brother. He stirred, his dry lips moving. "The supplies should last you two about a week. Hopefully, by then," Bobby added, "this will be over."

"Hopefully," Dean agreed, even though Bobby hadn't specified exactly what he meant. Dean didn't ask, and Bobby didn't elaborate. "Good luck."

Bobby nodded, shot another look over at Sam and the cot, and then headed for the door.

Dean watched Sam toss restlessly on the cot before turning to see what kind of supplies Bobby had provided. There was the usual, dehydrated fruit and emergency rations, and enough water to last the two of them a whole lot longer than a few days. It made Dean wonder if Bobby suspected he wasn't coming back.

He shook the thought away. There were more important things to worry about, like Sam. He poured a small cup of water and moved to the cot. Experience had taught him that Sam didn't do well with cups, so he grabbed a clean rag and soaked it in the water. He gripped the wet rag in his fist, thumb extended down, and squeezed it over Sam's mouth.

Sam gasped and choked, but licked the water up. "No," he mumbled. "Burns. Dean, it's me..." He choked again and did his best to roll away, pressed his face into the pillow and took long, shaking breaths.

It wasn't enough water, but Dean couldn't force too much on him at a time. Sam was dehydrated, that much was clear, but it was also clear that there was only one thing he wanted.

Sam's hair was damp and greasy and gross, but Dean reached out to stroke it anyway. "Sorry, Sammy," he said, but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for, exactly. For not sitting with him through the first round, or for breaking in Hell, or for not protecting him better before the whole deal thing went down? There was too much.

Dean leaned down and pressed his cheek against Sam's forehead. "I'm sorry," he said again.

It didn't feel like it would ever be enough.

***

Sam was a talker, so it was a little eerie when he would fall into those long silences, almost as eerie as the stretches of talking. It was hard to watch, harder to listen to, at times. The things Sam would say? That he would try to do?

Sometimes he was the Sam that Dean knew from all of those years ago, the gangly Sam from before Stanford. Sometimes, he was different, darker and cold – the Sam from Dean's summer vacation Downstairs.

Sometimes he was unrecognizable.

Dean filled in the silences as best he could, talked more to Sam than he had ever talked before. Most of it was bullshit, just to fill in the empty space between him and his unconscious brother. Which AC/DC song was his favorite, why "Eye of the Tiger" always made him want to lip-sync, that sort of thing.

But some of what he said? Hell, some of it was the deepest shit he'd ever allowed himself to think.

He was careful, of course. Dean could never tell when Sam was on the crazy upswing. That stuff, some of the stuff he had only voiced when Sam was dead, he saved for when Sam fell asleep. There was no reason to burden him with what Dean had gone through, would go through, was still going through.

Sometimes, it helped when he talked it out. That was another thing he was never going to tell Sam. Not if he could help it, at least.

"I wish," he said, after he'd talked about everything else, "I knew when you turned so dark." He knew when it happened to him. Three events that helped form the person he was After. Dad telling him he might have to kill Sam, Sam's death, and then finally allowing himself to be afraid of going to Hell.

"Maybe," Sam said, and Dean jerked in surprise. Sam's eyes were still closed, his breathing deep and even, so Dean had assumed he was still asleep. "Maybe I was always this dark, Dean," he continued, an actual coherent response. "Maybe you just believed the best of me."

What could he say to that?

"You're Sam," Dean replied. "The same little brat who mowed lawns and walked four freaking Great Danes every day to raise money for my GED." Dean smiled, and couldn't help but add, "Even though you were only three and a half feet tall."

Sam huffed. "I was four feet eleven, and I had to."

"You didn't have to," Dean countered.

"No one would have let me get a real job. And those dogs? Shit, Dean, they walked _me._ I hurt everywhere every morning."

Dean laughed. There he was, laid up with two broken legs, laid up to the point where Dad had let him drop out of school, and there was his cute midget of a little brother, raising money just for a stupid piece of paper with his name on it. It was also about the same time that Sam started the growth spurt that never ended. "I had to ice you down," he remembered aloud. "Dude, I was the one wearing twenty pound casts, and I had to rub _your_ legs."

Sam smiled. It was so good, so normal, and then he followed it up with, "Hamburgers."

Dean let the ice chill in his veins. There was no reason to get upset, no use trying to talk Sam through the hallucinations. Sam wasn't receiving the same channel Dean was broadcasting.

Dean reached out to ruffle his hair.

"That's you, isn't it?" Sam asked. He paused, cocking his head to one side, like he was listening to something very far away. "I can't tell sometimes. And that doesn't include the times when I think you've left. You haven't left, have you, Dean?" His voice turned young and pleading. "You promised."

Dean leaned close to his ear, hoped that by being close his voice would overpower what the demon blood had done to him. "I promised. Bitch."

Sam didn't respond, didn't smile and look reassured.

He just waited.

***

When the knock came at the door, Dean wasn't sure who he expected it to be. The panic room belonged to Bobby, so it couldn't be him. Dean knew that.

"You forget your key, Bobby?" Dean asked anyway, and slid the door open.

Castiel was there.

He looked a little worse for wear, had lost his trench coat and suit at some point, probably when he exploded, and scored himself some clothes similar to what Dean himself wore. Jeans and tee-shirt, cowboy boots and a leather jacket. Other than that, he looked about the same.

"I thought you were dead," Dean said. It struck him how stupid it sounded, how inane. Of course he had been dead. It was practically a requirement for joining Team Winchester.

"I got better," Cas replied. He looked over at Sam, sleeping fitfully on his cot, and then turned back to Dean, his expression barely even changing. "He's sick."

Dean nodded. He didn't want to have that conversation with Cas right then, not with Sam so out of it. "Can you help him?"

"Only an angel can heal," he said. "Those powers are blocked to me now."

Dean let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "I guess it was too much to ask. Well, since you're not an angel anymore, what brings you here? Shouldn't you be out there, enjoying your fall?"

"Lucifer walks the earth."

Way to be a killjoy, Cas. "Not my issue right now," Dean said, and jerked his chin at Sam's cot. "I have family business to deal with."

Cas's eyes were like blue lasers, sharp and cutting. "The world is coming to an end, Dean," he said. "And your family business is more pressing?"

"Yes," Dean said. "If I can't save my own brother, there's no way I can save anyone else."

Cas didn't reply. He brushed past Dean and left, just as abruptly as he had appeared.

Dean didn't turn to watch him go. He walked over to Sam's cot and buried his face in the wrinkled, smelly tee-shirt Sam wore. Sam needed a shower. He smelled of vomit and sour sweat and Sam.

"You stink," Dean told him, and that was enough, that was the drive for him to get to his feet and start moving again. Sam needed to be washed up, and Dean needed to take care of him.

***

From there, though, Sam took a bad turn. He started fighting the handcuffs, fighting hard and swearing the entire time. Sometimes his cursing was aimed at Lilith, sometimes himself or God or Dean. Mostly, though, it seemed to be aimed at two figures he was extremely pissed off at – Ruby, and Dad.

Locked up in a cold room with his brother going through violent demon detox, cleaning up vomit and other bodily substances, eating and drinking very little himself to minimize the time spent not taking care of Sam, and it was that, the swearing at their dad that really made him want to leave.

After almost a full day of non-stop screaming, Sam lost his voice. The misery didn't stop there, though. Sure, he couldn't scream, but then he started ripping up the hem of his shirt and his pillowcase with his teeth until his mouth started to bleed. Then he calmed down, though being calm didn't mean he was peaceful. Not by any means, no. He got sick again. He talked to an invisible Dean who, judging by what Sam managed to gasp out, was asking him some really fucked up shit.

"I hurt you," he said at one point. "I tried to drink your blood and I hurt you."

Dean wiped at his mouth, fighting to keep his own control. He wanted to shake Sam awake, wanted to make him see what was real and what wasn't, wanted to let him know that he hadn't done anything like that at all, that it wasn't real.

It didn't matter. Nothing he did seemed to matter at all. Sam brought up Ruby and started to cry, but it was only a little later that Dean caught the sucker-punch.

"...Forty years in Hell and you still want to save me. Four months without you and I turn into a monster."

Sam's voice was broken. He sounded like how Dean felt, defeated. And when he started to cry again?

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered.

And Dean couldn't do it anymore. It was too hard, too much. The promise he made? It was going to kill him. Maybe that would be how it all would end. Maybe that would be all right.

He went up to the cot and unlocked the handcuffs, pushed Sam into a sitting position and got on the cot next to him. Dean held him, like when they were little and Dad was gone and Sammy didn't know why. He slept for first time in days, his arms wrapped around his brother, Sam dozing against his chest.

***

After what he said to Cas, he didn't expect the guy to show up again. But he did, proving that he was every inch the stubborn bastard Dean thought he was. Cas didn't show up for casual conversation, either. That wasn't his style. He gave updates on the world outside, the world beyond the walls of Bobby's panic room.

Dean guessed that Cas also tried to cheer him up a little. The guy wasn't so hot at that, but the situation was pretty raw, so Dean may not have been in his most receptive state. The only thing that Dean really felt good about was one small thing Cas had said. At the time, he didn't think anything of it, but later, he repeated it to himself.

"_The important part is over. He has asked for forgiveness, has he not?_"

If God was out there and paying any kind of attention at all, it mattered.

Twice, Cas told Dean he would bring him anything he needed. The second time, Dean told him to help Bobby instead. Dean wasn't sure, but he had a feeling that too much time had gone by, that Bobby was late and in danger. They still had a lot of food on hand – Sam ate barely anything at all, which helped – but they were running low on water.

Cas nodded and vanished into thin air, the first time Dean had seen him use that trick in a while.

"Was that who I thought it was?"

Dean turned to Sam. He was sitting up on the cot, rubbing at his eyes. "You with me again?"

"I think so. Castiel was here, right?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"Why?" Sam asked. "Doesn't he have more important things to do? I unleashed Lucifer, he's got to be a little busy dealing with that."

"He is," Dean pointed out. "He wasn't stopping by just to chat. He wants us back in the game."

Sam turned his face away. "I think I'll be sitting this one out."

"Then we both will."

"Dean, people need you."

"And I need you." God, he sounded pathetic, but it was the truth. "I need to know that you're okay. I can't do this job and worry about you at the same time."

Sam didn't respond. Sam just sat there and looked miserable. He'd lost weight, Dean realized, though that wasn't much of a surprise. With how little he'd eaten, how much he'd been sick, Dean was more surprised that he hadn't noticed it before. It wasn't like he had much else to do.

"How are you?" Dean asked.

Sam lifted his face, like he was looking at him, but kept his eyes closed. "You're the real Dean, aren't you?" he asked at last. "I'm really talking to you."

"Yeah."

Sam lifted his hands, showing off the raw marks left on his wrists by the handcuffs. "I thought I told you to tie me down."

Dean had to struggle to stay calm. "I did," he replied, once he knew he could keep his voice from breaking. "It wasn't working, Sammy. It made it worse."

Sam dropped his hands. "Oh."

Dean waited for it, waited for the moment when Sam would veer off and start answering questions that he hadn't asked. It had to happen soon, and every moment Sam spent actually talking to him made the hope rise in Dean's throat. It had been days since Sam was that coherent. Days.

"I, uh," he started, and then stumbled over the words. He didn't even know what he was trying to say. Awake and alert, did they really have that much in common? Dean couldn't ask him about the hallucinations. Dean wasn't stupid, he knew that there were some things Sam hadn't said, but it made him wonder.

"Did you really look through my phone?" Sam asked. The question was so out there, so out of place that Dean didn't know if his brother was still with him.

"No." Was that important? Dean suddenly wished that he had. "Why?"

Sam shook his head, but that slump was back in his shoulders. "I guess that wasn't real."

"Sam, are you still with me? Because you're not making a whole lot of sense."

"It's nothing," Sam said, even though it sure as hell seemed like something. He wasn't talking though; he turned away and stretched out on the cot, and said, "I'm tired."

"We'll talk about this later," Dean told him.

Sam mumbled something into his pillow, something that sounded like, "No we won't."

***

Dean hoped that that was the end of it, that Sam was better, but the truth wasn't that kind. When he woke up, Sam was sick again. He kept water down, which was nice, but nothing else stayed in him. The only comfort Dean could take was that Sam wasn't crazy. He stayed there with Dean, responded to questions, and voluntarily washed his own self up.

"I think we're hitting the end of this," Dean finally told him.

Sam hunched over the puke bucket, rocking back and forth, like he thought that making himself seasick was going to help. "You think?" he managed.

"Yeah, I do." He smiled and reached for Sam's hair, which was still pretty damn gross. Not as gross as the awful growth he had on his chin, but Dean knew he didn't look much better. "Which is good because you need a shower and a shave, pronto."

Sam laughed, and managed not to vomit on himself again. Another victory.

Maybe it was that, that surge of hope, that made him say it. "Sammy?"

"It's Sam."

Dean chose to ignore that wonderfully bitchy tone of voice. He leaned closer, high on Sam's relative good health. "Open your eyes."

In an instant, Sam was on his feet, the puke bucket on the floor, gross contents spilled. Sam flattened himself against the wall farthest away from Dean, hands wrapped over his ears. "No!" he yelled. "You're just a hallucination! I promised Dean! I promised him I wouldn't!"

Dean grabbed him by the wrists, pulled his hands away even though Sam put up one hell of a fight. "_Christo_, Sammy! You're over it! I know you are! _Christo!_"

"No," he moaned. "It's not true. You're not real."

"Even if I were a hallucination, God's name would still hurt you."

Sam went still at that. He lifted his head, wiped at the crust under his eyes, and looked at Dean. His eyes were darker, maybe, but they were hazel again. "Dean?" he said, his voice high and reed-thin.

There were a million things he could have said, but nothing made it past the lump in his throat. Dean settled on the next best thing, which was to grab his stupid little brother in a tight hug and not let him go for a very long time.

***

Sam got first shower. The guy was gross, seriously rank. Dean thought about burning his clothes, but first things had to come first. He washed his face in the sink in Bobby's kitchen and shaved off his own facial hair. The stubble itched, and it was a relief to be clean-shaven again.

Well, a little stubble didn't hurt every now and then. It kind of added to his roguish charm. Usually. He wanted the motherfucking hair _gone_, though, so clean-shaven he went.

He turned to the stairs when he heard the shower shut off, was on his way to scrub the sick smell off of himself, too, when he heard it.

The front door. There was a tapping sound, just loud and even enough to not be entirely natural. Like someone was knocking, but had been knocking for a long time. Dean fumbled for his jacket and the demon-killing knife. The handle felt cool in his hand, cool and familiar, though it felt like another forty years had passed since he and Sam went into the panic room together.

It wasn't Cas at the door. Cas wouldn't have bothered trying to knock, even if he knew that they'd both made it out intact. Which meant that it was someone or something else.

Dean had no clue who was there, but he could guess as to what.

Sam bolted down the stairs to meet him at the door, hair dripping water and only wearing a pair of jeans. "Demon," he hissed.

"I figured that out myself," Dean said. "But thanks." He didn't want to know how Sam was so sure. He thought that part of him would be gone with the black eyes. Dean looked down, and saw that Sam was holding a small flask. Holy water, he guessed. The demon-sense was useful, maybe, gave Sam time to prepare for an attack.

Dean threw the front door open, stepped out of the way just far enough to let Sam fling the holy water on the poor possessed woman waiting there.

"Stop!" she said, rubbing and spitting and smoking. "I come in peace!"

"Like hell," Dean growled.

She shot Dean a dark look, one that seemed darker because of the black eyes. "Don't you remember me, Dean?"

Dean lowered the knife, but just a hair. There was something familiar about her, about the way she moved and spoke, something that he couldn't quite place. "I don't give a shit," he replied.

"You should. After all, we broke that first seal together, didn't we?"

The air was gone from Dean's lungs. He felt a hand on his shoulder, Sam, and heard his voice in the distance, but couldn't make out the words. All he could do was recognize her, the arrogant pose, the little smile playing on her lips; even burned from the holy water, she was smug.

"Bela," he said.

_To be continued...  
_


End file.
